Stephen R. Barley

Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering, Emeritus

Management Science and Engineering

Bio

Stephen R. Barley is the Richard W. Weiland Professor Emeritus of Management Science and Engineering. He holds an AB. in English from the College of William and Mary, an M.Ed. from the Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in Organization Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to coming to Stanford in 1994, Barley served for ten years on the faculty of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He was editor of the Administrative Science Quarterly from 1993 to 1997 and the founding editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review from 2002 to 2004. Barley serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Annals, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Information and Organization, Engineering Studies and the Journal of Organizational Ethnography. He has been the recipient the Academy of Management's New Concept Award and was named Distinguished Scholar by the Academy of Management's Organization and Management Theory Division in 2006, Organization Communication and Information Systems Division in 2010 and Critical Management Studies Division in 2010. He has been a fellow at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is a Fellow of the Academy of Management. In 2006 the Academy of Management Journal named Barley as the author of the largest number of interesting articles in the field of management studies. Barley was a member of the Board of Senior Scholars of the National Center for the Educational Quality of the Workforce and co-chaired National Research Council and the National Academy of Science's committee on the changing occupational structure in the United States.

The committee's report, The Changing Nature of Work, was published in 1999. He recently served on the National Research Council's committee on the Information Technology Research and Development Ecosystem. Barley has written over sixty articles on the impact of new technologies on work, the organization of technical work and organizational culture. He edited a volume on technical work entitled Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in the United States published in 1997 by the Cornell University Press. In collaboration with Gideon Kunda of Tel Aviv University, Barley authored Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in the Knowledge Economy, an ethnography of contingent work among engineers and software developers published by the Princeton University Press in 2004. Barley teaches courses on the management of R&D, project management, the organizational implications of technological change, organizational behavior, social network analysis and ethnographic field methods. He has served as a consultant to organizations in a variety of industries including publishing, banking, computers, electronics and aerospace. Barley is currently researching corporate power in the United States, the rhetorical history of telecommuting, and occupations that provide support so that engineers, high level managers and their families can manage their lives.

Technical work and the division of labor: Stalking the wily anomalyBetween Craft and Science: Technical Work in U.S. SettingsBarley, S. R., Whalley, P.edited by Barley, S. R., Orr, J.ILR Press.1997: 20–52

Abstract

This paper outlines a role-based approach for conceptualizing and investigating the contention in some previous research that technologies change organizational and occupational structures by transforming patterns of action and interaction. Building on Nadel's theory of social structure, the paper argues that the microsocial dynamics occasioned by new technologies reverberate up levels of analysis in an orderly manner. Specifically, a technology's material attributes are said to have an immediate impact on the nonrelational elements of one or more work roles. These changes, in turn, influence the role's relational elements, which eventually affect the structure of an organization's social networks. Consequently, roles and social networks are held to mediate a technology's structural effects. The theory is illustrated by ethnographic and sociometric data drawn from a comparative field study of the use of traditional and computerized imaging devices in two radiology departments.

Careers, identities, and institutions: the legacy of the Chicago School of SociologyThe Handbook of Career TheoryBarley, S. R.edited by Arthur, M., Hall, T., Lawrence, B.Cambridge University Press.1989: 41–65

On technology, time, and social order: Technically induced change in the temporal organization of radiological workMaking Time: Ethnographies of High Technology OrganizationsBarley, S. R.edited by Dubinskas, F. A.Temple University Press.1988: 123–169

Technology, power, and the social organization of work: towards a pragmatic theory of skilling and deskillingResearch in the Sociology of OrganizationsBarley, S. R.1988; 6: 33-80

The social construction of a machine: Ritual, superstition, magical thinking and other pragmatic responses to running a CT scannerBiomedicine ExaminedBarley, S. R., Lock, M.edited by Gordon, D.Kluwer.1988: 497–539

Technology as an occasion for structuring: Observations on CT scanners and the social order of radiology departmentsAdministrative Science QuarterlyBarley, S. R.1986; 31: 78-108